Season finale Lard 1-2-11

Douglas LeeJan 2, 2011 11:20 AM

Good Morning, Broncos fans! Mike Klis has apparently squeezed an extra day out of Brian Xanders PR Week™. Heck, why not? After all, the guy got his PhD in football from Dan Reeves. Xanders strangely talks about the Broncos' "history and heritage" of running the ball well. This is concerning - running a sports team is about looking forward rather than into the past. Winning in the NFL is about passing - passing to set up more passing, and running to keep defenses honest. We've been over this before, but it cannot be overstated - successful passing correlates to winning; successful running does not. Yet, Klis states that one of Xanders' missions for the Broncos is to balance out their pass/run ratio. Hopefully Xanders understands that a more even pass/run ratio should result from offense efficiency (by passing), rather than an expressed goal of running the ball more.

Now, I've certainly been critical of the blatant PR push for Xanders this week, but please don't confuse that with me calling Xanders incompetent. Surely I don't believe that Josh McDaniels was responsible for every smart decision during his tenure and Xanders for every poor one, nor do I believe the opposite. Like most things, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. But this week has felt like a snow job, and frankly it's insulting to the collective intelligence of all Broncos fans, even if some of them are buying it (you know where to find those folks). Yet, the way Xanders sounded on the radio on Monday and is now citing the Broncos' history as a reason to run the ball more aren't making me feel so great about the guy...

Broncos

According to Klis, John Elway will be introduced sometime this week as the VP of Football Operations for the Broncos and will be overseeing both GM Brian Xanders and the next head coach. Hopefully his time with the Crush and decades spent talking football with his late father (and former Broncos scouting director) Jack have John truly prepared for this...

I wrote my intro without seeing this article about the dominance of the passing game in today's NFL from Judy Battista on the DP's site. Any chance Klis or Xanders is reading it? Did the editors at the DP slip this one in for irony's sake? Did they even notice the opposing viewpoints themselves?

PFW is hearing that Denver is happy with Syd'Quan Thompson and sees a bigger role in his future.

Hackery

Woody lays out his offseason plan for the Broncos. It sounds fun and all, but making over the roster without first figuring out who the head coach is (unlike what Ted Bartlett did) is totally ridiculous.

Related

Albert Breer reports that &#8220front-office structure/GM is vital to landing Jim Harbaugh for NFL teams.â So I guess Brian Xanders takes the Broncos out of the running no matter how close Elway gets to Harbuagh in South Florida tonight.